


I'm not half the man I used to be

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Emotional Constipation, Gen, Heartache, Introspection, Mental Institutions, Minor Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: 1963 changed the Hargreeves in many unspeakable ways, but for some, that change was for the better, even if he did have an ache deep in his bones and a rattle in his chest and a broken heart that shattered like glass.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	I'm not half the man I used to be

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to use a different style for this one, so I hope it turned out alright! I've just got so many feelings about Diego and the asylum that I needed to write it. For some reason, I'm struggling to write very long fics for the Umbrella Academy, so a lot of the recent ones have been a little shorter? I had hoped that this one wouldn't end up the same but I guess not. I loved the whole second season, but something that stuck out to me was this deep sense of almost meloncolly that Diego seemed to carry with him throughout. Like, he was still the same old Diego we know and love, and both he and his siblings all went through some major shit, but he just seemed to carry a sadness with him that I really wanted to get into. I hope I portrayed that well enough. I didn't want to portray it as a depression, but I did want to put across that he was sadder and that he had changed somewhat and that his trauma and time at the asylum had turned him into an almost completely different person. I hope I did that alright haha. You guys let me know what you think!

They had all noticed a difference in Diego.

A new weight to his shoulders, almost. A sharper, colder edge to his gaze. Maybe his chin was held a little bit higher than it ever used to be. But there was also a sadness there, something deep and unspeakable and unusual that they saw in moments when his guard was down, or when the light dances over the new planes and angles of his face and the darkness accentuates the despair in his eyes, carefully hidden and tucked away behind a thick, impenetrable wall of bravado and playfulness.

It wasn't just his physical appearance that was different, his long tangled hair that hung across his shoulders, the paler tone of his skin from three months in sterile white walls under synthetic lighting, the deepened colour of his brown eyes highlighted by the dark circles that surrounded them, the untouchable yet palpable anger that settled just beneath his skin and surged up like a striking viper at a moments notice. No, there was more to it than that. There was the way he jumped at every sudden sound, constantly on edge, his mind jumping to the worst-case scenario. The way he would lean against the wall, arms crossed against his chest, loosely, not like the bonds of a straightjacket, watching the moving outside world with the eagle-eyed gaze of a man used to paranoia. Sometimes, his gaze was distant, like a daydream. Other times, it was sharp, like the edge of a blade.

He spent an amount of time in the shower vying on the brink of too long, relishing the feeling of the hot water running down his skin, soaking his hair until it felt like lead, unwinding his tense and painful muscles, washing away the feeling of blood on his skin and the sins he could never seem to scrub away, warming him up from the inside out. He would curl up on the couch or in an armchair and would just watch the world go by, watch his siblings enter and leave Vanya's too-small apartment, watch them and the civilians down below on the sidewalk go about their daily lives. Sometimes, on particularly good days, they would find him curled up on the window seat with his knees to his chest and his head resting against the cool glass of the window, strands of his dark hair getting collected in the condensation, a steaming warm drink or the neck of a beer bottle in his hand as he stared outside with a pensive expression, but despite how peaceful and calm and tranquil he seemed on the outside, there was still that constant, everpresent sadness that almost seemed to exist in follow him like an old friend.

They would go about their lives, and they would pass by him like he was a ghost in the space, silent and watchful, ever-present but not so at the same time. Out of everyone, he was the only one who had nothing waiting for him in 2019. Eudora was dead. Grace no longer existed. The gym had hired someone new and had barricaded his home beside the boiler room. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do. So he just sat there and watched as Luther went out looking for work, as Five came and went with some new information or the craving for good caffeine, as Allison went to the library to find some information on her husband from the past, as Klaus left with a haunted look in his eye and returned either stinking of alcohol and drunk off his ass or looking worse than when he had left but hiding it with a smile.

He spent a great amount of time alone with Vanya in her apartment, listening with rapt attention when she shyly brought her violin out to the living room to practice with a live audience, a rare occurrence indeed, and barely flinched when she got consumed by the flow and the sound and the vibrations that something would fly across the room and shatter right by his ear. He would assure her that everything was alright and beg her to keep playing, and with an embarrassed blush across her cheeks, she would indulge him, head down and her hair hiding half her face like it did when they were children, and Diego would reach out a gentle hand and brush it back behind her ear so he could see her while she played.

He was almost a different man. As if his time in 1963 had changed him, morphed him into someone unknown and unrecognisable. As if those many countless hours of drugged isolation clad in a straightjacket like a pig to slaughter had made him reflect. Or those three months of being doubted and psychoanalysed and made to question his own sanity had made him wonder who he really was.

Before, he would have scoffed at the idea of bonding or the concept of family time. Now, he could sit for hours and listen to Allison gush about Raymond, or listen to Klaus, sometimes sober, sometimes not, tell him all about Dave and Ben and what happened behind closed doors in 1963, and would help train with Luther in the back alley behind Vanya's apartment. He would hold Five's many notebooks and help him come to conclusions about whatever plot to fix their current situation and would help Vanya reach things in the high shelves or repair broken things around her place, and had even taken the time out of his day on multiple occasions to help Vanya's neighbour search for her cat Mr Puddles, with overwhelming success. 

He was less likely to jump into conversations like he used to and preferred to just sit back and really listen to what was going on before he interrupted. And then, only then, would he provide his own feedback or opinion. He felt safer listening instead of speaking, observing instead of taking action, But despite his calmer, more docile demeanour, he still had a very strong memory, and he could hold a grudge better than anyone. 

Like the day rain began to pelt heavily down against the window and he jumped up from his seat for the first time that day to reach for his coat, almost too eager to get out there, and Five stood in the way of the door with his hands on his hips and a permanent frown pulling at his face. "Where do you think you're going?"

"For a walk," Diego had replied flippantly as he bent at the knee to tie his shoes.

"You're insane," Five had said, shaking his head. "It's raining. I don't know what _foolish deed_ you're trying to accomplish, but you're only going to get yourself sick, and we need everyone in peak condition if we have any chance of figuring out how to fix this."

Something cruel and angry glistened in Diego's eyes then, like the hard, sharp glint of his knife in the sunlight, and he had stood up and glowered down at Five with an expression that made Five blanch and take a few steps back from Diego's wrath. "Well, unless you're going to stick a needle in me and drug me up again, or lock me away in a padded room strapped in a straightjacket, then there isn't very much that you can do to stop me."

He had pushed past Five, effectively shoving him out of the way and he slammed the door behind him as Five stumbled away, looking sad and horrified and pale as if he'd just seen a ghost, or he was going to be sick. He blinked away before anyone could ask him about it, something unidentifiable crossing his face, twisting up near-painfully like he had eaten a lemon. Hours later, Diego would return, soaking wet and laughing softly, out of breath as his wet hair curled gently against his forehead as he shucked his jacket like a sodden outer shell and hurried to indulge in the hot water of Vanya's shower for far too long, the rattling of the pipes echoing long into the night.

Nobody had the guts to bring it up long after it had happened, especially not Five, who didn't show his face around the apartment for the next few days.

Perhaps Luther should have known that he'd be the one to figure it out first, to reach the correct conclusion before anyone else had the chance, but it had mostly come to him on a whim, watching Diego stare out the window one day almost as if he were searching for someone in the distance, peering through the glass at the bustling street down below in hunt for a familiar face.

"You know," Luther said one day, coming up beside Diego and leaning his weight against the window, staring out at the darkening sky with the slowly approaching storm and the traffic down below, listening to the sounds of honking horns and buskers on the sidewalk and common petty arguments that had become their norm. "I don't think she's coming back."

"You don't know that," Diego replied, not looking away from the window, his knees curled up to his chest. Any other time, Diego would be on his feet, face contorted in anger and jabbing a finger into Luther's chest in defiance and rage, maybe stuttering in his haste to get the words out. But this Diego barely turned his head to look at him, stoic and calm and docile in a new way.

"That woman... you didn't even know her," Luther continued. "She was a lie. Everything about her was fabricated for your benefit. You don't even know the first thing about her."

Diego was quiet for so long that Luther had begun to think that he was ignoring him again, but when he spoke, his words were quiet and revered, like a holy man speaking about the word of God. "I think I knew her better than either of us thought. I don't think it was all a lie. I think that some of it was real, even if she wouldn't like to admit it. But sometimes, there's nothing wrong with a lie. I don't mind missing a fake version of her, because I hope that one day, she'll trust me enough to let me see who she really is. But until then, I'll hold on to the lie, and the lie is pretty damn good. I just wish that she didn't feel like she had to lie to me in the first place."

Luther gestured out the window, at the darkened clouds above and the bustling crowd below. "But you wait for her, every day, and hope that you can see her. You go for runs around town when it rains because she loved the rain, or the storm reminds you of her, or something just as hopelessly romantic. How are you so sure that she's going to turn up?'

"Because she's human," Diego shrugged as the first drop of rain landed against the glass. "And people need each other. We need that connection. We're not supposed to be alone. And she might have powers like the rest of us, and she might act like she's not, but she's still only human. Though we try, we can't survive on our own. I've tried, and it didn't work."

"Why are you searching for her? Why are you waiting? After everything she did, to _you_ , to _us_... why are you still hoping that you can change her?"

"Because I love her."

So Diego remained at the window, a silent sentry, a watchful statue, as he kept a keen eye on the passing world, hoping to see a familiar shock of colour and a cheeky grin and the wild short hair of a crazed killer with a soft side, knowing deep down that it was a very unlikely hope.

A melancholy stuck to his bones like a glue, sliding between his marrow and thickening up his blood, the dark memories of the asylum filling his mind with cottonwool and barbed wire wound together, but still, he carried on, hoping for just a moment that those dark clouds would break above him and give him a moment of respite where he could pretend like everything was normal and nothing had changed. But he also knew that he had been broken by that place, by that time, and it could quite possibly be something unrepairable. He always was unfixable, unsavable, Eudora had told him so herself. But still. He had tried.

Maybe he could be better, filling in those fractured lines within his soul with family and love and goodness instead of what they asylum and his father tried to put three. Maybe he could finally be the brother he was supposed to be, the brother his family deserved.

1963 changed him the way it had changed all of them. So what if his changes were more obvious were the others, had changed the very fabric of who he was? He didn't mind. Being a little more reflective, a little more thoughtful, a little more perceptive might be just the little kick up the ass he had needed. He certainly wasn't the man he used to be, and for the life of him, he couldn't imagine why that would be a bad thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited for the New Mutants movie that I'm almost vibrating and I'm really disappointed that it got so many bad reviews (tbh Disney kinda already set it up to fail) and I'm sad that it bombed before it really started, so my minds kinda been on that, but, in other and more important news:
> 
> QUESTION OF THE DAY: What are your opinions on Diego and Lila's relationship?? Some think it's incest, some think it's fine. I'm personally of the mindset that it's fine because unlike Luther and Allison, they weren't raised together as siblings and are effectively strangers who just so happen to have this thing in common, so I'm fine with it, but I would like to hear some of you guy's opinions!! Don't yell at me though please, I'm too fragile for discourse haha.


End file.
